I Hope That You Miss Me A Little When I'm Gone
by tenderoni
Summary: Sam's leaving was Artie's breaking point. Trigger warning for attempted suicide.


****Characters/Pairings: ****Artie Abrams/Partie friendship. Mentions of past Artina, Bartie, potential Sartie and Quartie as well.

****Warnings: ****References to suicide attempts.

****Notes: ****Inspired during the initial news of Chord Overstreet being fired from Glee, and finished after his departure was confirmed. Title based on the song "Miss Me" by Drake and Lil Wayne.

Artie looked at the page in his geometry notebook, but he wasn't studying equations. There were two columns on the page. Instead of class notes, there were two lists of names.

**__**People who would care if I was gone **__**was the heading of the right half, and **__**People who wouldn't care**__**was written at the top of the left half of the page.

He sighed as he crossed one name off the right side.

__Sam.__

He and Sam had become good friends over the past year. They enjoyed playing video games together, and Sam was always there to help when he needed guitar accompaniment, such as during his ill-fated home ec prom serenade. They grew closer during Nationals in New York, when Artie bought him an overpriced hot dog from a Times Square vendor while everyone else was enjoying their boxed lunches.

Artie heard the news a week ago; Sam's parents were moving. The job market wasn't getting any better in Lima, and the motel manager kicked them out for overstaying their welcome by several months. (__Apparently, even long-term rentals had an expiration date__, Artie thought bitterly.) Mr. Evans got a call from his former employer, informing him that they were opening a new office in North Dakota-apparently the economy was somewhat booming there. That, combined with the extremely low cost of living, meant that the family was headed northwest.

On the one hand, he was happy for their new beginning. At the same time, however, Artie bemoaned the loss of one of his closest friends. Even though his dad had a job where they were going, Sam's family was going to have to scrape by on the bare essentials until they could find somewhere to live, as well as work for Sam and his mother.

Sam couldn't afford to get a cell phone or laptop again for a long time. "Dude, i'm lucky you guys bought me my guitar back!" he told Artie, who nodded.

__He's going to forget about me. Go to some rural high school and meet new, cool people he can hang out with every day. Why bother with the nerd he left behind in Ohio?__

Then, Artie's eye followed the arrow that went a scratched out blob on the right side to a name on the left.

__Tina.__

He kind of brought that on himself. She did care once.

Nowadays, the thought of Tina inevitably brought up __Mike___. _Although they were friends, Artie suspected that, for Chang's part, it was largely based on pity. He had everything he wanted: his dream ****and****his girl. Although he was such a fucking NICE guy (which made everything even more complicated), Mike would probably be relieved underneath it all. Brittany was no longer a distraction for Artie, after all. The threat, however small, to his picture perfect relationship would be eliminated permanently.

Next up, __mom and dad___._

They'd never admit it, but life would probably be easier for them without the burden of dealing with a wheelchair-bound teenager.

Artie always felt the bitter sting of disapproval coming from their eyes. He had a virtually permanent slot on the honor roll, but that was expected from an Abrams.

That was about the only expectation he met from his family. Sports were always a big deal in the household; his father was a baseball player that made it into the minor leagues before retiring from the game to become an accountant.

Meanwhile, he had a stay-at-home mother that moonlighted as a booster for various athletic teams. When his friends came over to visit (a rarer and rarer occurrence these days), they expressed wonder that such housewives existed outside of black-and-white '50s sitcom reruns on TV Land.

Artie himself was a budding baseball player once. When he was seven, he received the MVP award from his Little League team. All of his relatives thought he'd play for the Cleveland Indians one day.

Obviously, that was beyond his grasp now. Several years ago, Artie looked up wheelchair sports on the Internet and found out about the National Wheelchair Softball Association.

He gave his parents the printouts excitedly. "They even work with the MLB!"

Mrs. Abrams paused. "Honey, don't you think that this is a bit more than you can handle? Are you sure?" She tried to keep her voice soothing, but her words were far from reassuring.

"We're not paying for that Special Olympics crap," Mr. Abrams said curtly.

So much for that.

The other thing Artie had loved doing was performing. He sang, danced, and played guitar since he was a toddler. After the accident, he resigned himself to not being able to do one of those things again, but aimed to become even better at the other two. Music allowed him to get lost in it, when few other things in his life did.

His parents didn't approve. According to his father, the arts were for godless socialist fags, and he didn't raise his son to be one of __those__. His mother was slightly more understanding, but expressed her doubts that Artie should be spending so much time on music, since the chances that a handicapped artist would find success in the entertainment industry were slim to none.

When he joined the Glee club, it just got worse. Even though it was the first place he ever met friends that were into the same things he was (regardless of what has happened to those friendships now), his parents weren't happy. They begrudgingly drove him to local competitions before New Directions got a wheelchair-accessible bus (spending the whole drive there and back complaining about the effort), and never showed up at any of their performances.

Even joining the football team hadn't gained their approval; they shook their heads at him riding the bench for every game.

__Honestly, they'd both be happier if I wasn't here anymore___, _he thought.

Artie kept going down the list.

__Brittany___. _It wasn't that she wouldn't care, per se, but she had Santana. He always knew that, even when they were together. She would be fine.

He chuckled at the thought of even bothering to write the name _Santana _on the left side. She hated his fucking guts, and vice versa. Inside his head, Artie knew that Brittany hadn't truly believed Santana's bullshit story about how "the plumbing was different" and just __wanted__to believe it so she could cheat on him without guilt.

It was easier for him to just blame Santana, the ex-cheerleader who had treated the nerd like crap long before the thought of dating her best friend even entered his mind. He just wanted to think the best of her, think that Brittany wouldn't purposely hurt him. So much for that. __I was the one being stupid for daring to hope that she cared about my feelings___._

__Finn.__Artie chuckled bitterly at the thought. _He'd be happy to get rid of the dead weight. _After all, he got Finn kicked off the team once.

__Rachel___. _She barely acknowledged Artie's existence most of the time. He simultaneously admired and feared her drive, but hated the fact that she never seemed to realize that he had more than enough talent to meet her halfway in a song, just because he didn't fit the image of the male lead typically paired with the young ingenue. Of course, he was partly to blame. Part of Artie regretted that he didn't audition for a nationals solo that year, but after what Mercedes told him about the critiques (as well as the obviously biased selection of Jessie St. James as a judge), he was glad he didn't go through with it.

Speaking of her; __Mercedes__, Artie thought. In his opinion, she was one of the handful of people at McKinley that could match his level of swag on his best days (now few and far between). She'd probably miss her duet sparring partner, especially on R&B songs...but once some new freshman guy with an awesome voice joins, she'll be over it.

__Kurt__. They were the first guys to join Glee club, back when the sketchy Sandy Ryerson ran it. He felt bonded to him for that alone. Still, they had never ended up becoming best friends. Not to mention that Kurt's year had been incredibly stressful; Artie thought that his problems were minor in comparison. Even if he'd support him, Kurt had way too much on his plate to deal with his issues, too.

Besides, he was consumed in Blaine now. Oh, __Blaine__. He was an acquaintance to Artie at best. From the little he saw of him at Rachel's party, he thought he was kind of a douche. Artie could at least handle his liquor; he couldn't say the same for the Warbler. Kurt spent the whole time cleaning up after him instead of having fun like he used to.

Blaine also liked to brag about his wealth. Artie's family was relatively well-off, due to the substantial settlement they received from the car accident that left him paraplegic. However, most of the money went towards such unexciting expenses as retrofitting their home for access and making his dad's van wheelchair-accessible.

Once, he made fun of Artie's Sears vintage sweater vest. Some people focused on other things besides fashion, Artie thought. But even Kurt had grown to accept his style. Blaine wasn't fashionable in the same sense Kurt was: as opposed to being avant-garde, his sense of style was more stereotypical preppy boy. Most of his street clothes actually resembled the Dalton Academy blazer that would soon be a thing of the past-according to Lauren (__another name on the left side of the list; they were acquaintances though AV Club and now Glee club, but it was strictly business__), Blaine was transferring to McKinley at the beginning of the new school year.

Artie rushed through the other names in his head, not needing more than a moment of thought for each:

__Mr. Schue__- Whatever, I guess he'll miss my sweet vocal riffs at the end of New Directions numbers, but it's not like he ever wanted to give me a lead in competitions anyway. Can't have the wheelchair kid in the spotlight.

__Quinn___ - _She had always shown Artie rare moments of compassion, especially when she had been pregnant with Beth. Maybe that could have turned into a friendship, or even a deeper connection. But as it stood, they barely knew each other, and she probably wouldn't even notice his fading out of her life.

__Coach Bieste___ - _He really owed her one after the whole Santa Claus scheme, no matter how silly he found it in retrospect. _I guess she'd kind of miss me_, he thought,_ although she would also be happy to have a stronger football team without my crippled self. (Battering ram? Not so much.) _Artie was uncertain as to which emotion would take precedence.

Artie looked over his handiwork. He was as content as he would ever be with the results of his life. He took a couple of Xanax in his hand and chased it down his throat with some water. The boy continued and gulped the water until he had swallowed the entire bottle of pills.

"Hey, Artie! Why aren't you picking up?"

Puck sped to the Abrams household in his car, continually calling with his cell phone. He had texted Artie several times that day to come over to Chez Puckerman and play __Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3__, but he hadn't responded, very unusual for Artie. He was always down for some video games.

Although Puck didn't want to admit it, he was worried about his boy. His geometry tutoring had single-handedly kept him out of juvie, and they always split a good luck waffle before his exams.

The doors to the house were locked. Impatient and not wanting to wait for someone to answer the door, Noah picked the lock and walked in. He tiptoed to Artie's room at the back of the house.

The bespectacled boy was unconscious, slumped in his wheelchair. "Oh shit, dude! Are you okay?" Puck shook him for a few seconds until he realized that Artie wasn't going to wake up. That's when he noticed the prescription bottle on the night stand; it was in Artie's name-he had gotten the pills after he told his doctor he was feeling some shooting pain in his body (which had happened intermittently over the years since his accident)-and Puck realized what had happened.

He knew that Artie had taken his breakup with Brittany hard, but Puck had believed that his friend snapped out of his "nothing to live for" funk after their adventures at prom. As he got to know Artie, Puck also came to realize that the younger boy had never truly gotten over Tina. __He knew what lost love felt like__, Puck thought bitterly. _That's probably why we became so tight._

"You're gonna be okay..." Puck said, more to convince himself than anything else. He was dialing 911 on his cell when he saw the note.

It was clearly a suicide note. It was filled with Artie's instantly recognizable scrawl. Split into two sides, one side was overflowing with names. The other side, ****People who would care if I was gone****, only had one legible name:

_Puck._

"Hello, 911 Emergency? Please tell me your location."


End file.
